A lot of people do not draw the distinction between talking about things in an educational context versus it being a way they express themselves for their own needs. Laws like this make people afraid to do so until it is contested because the act of contesting it is itself punitive. The cooling effect is implicit in the design of the law because it recognizes law removes people’s ability to support themselves in a society before it has a chance to be tested meaning only the secure of a minority under extreme fire can contest it and that means becoming very visible in circumstances where one’s safety often relies on being invisible.

This teacher is likely under extreme fire right now by a mob of people telling them they are a pedophile, delusional, harmful and trying to exploit every shred of exposed weaknesses to gendered nonsense one naturally lets be known when one comes out as non-binary.

Where legal protections are shaky schools will fire teachers under concerns for that teacher’s physical and mental safety if enough parents are valued at being a threat by feeling empowered by their interpretation of the law or the idea that a school is operating outside the law. Ultimately running a school is government money that needs to be paid so an employee going up against a school board for wrongful dismissal will not impact the individual school as much when the main currency for the school board employees is time and complexity of a bunch of individual parents suing because their little darling asked them what someone calling themselves Mx. means when they came home.